The drive to Anya's estate was quiet. The English countryside was turning green with the arrival of spring, the rolling hills dotted with sheep. Leo lived with Anya in a sprawling, manor-style house that had been in her family for generations.
Since his parents died in a car accident when he was a child, Anya, his father's closest friend and commanding officer in the military, had taken him in. She was the only mother he knew, and the estate was the only home he remembered.
It was a big, lonely house. Anya had never married, her life consumed by the military and then by the high-stakes world of motorsport. Aside from a few house helps who kept the place running, it was just the two of them.
He pulled the SUV into the gravel driveway and backed it up to the side entrance. With the help of the estate's groundskeeper, a sturdy man named Thomas who didn't ask questions, they moved the pod onto a heavy-duty dolly.
